Jason Read on "Parallel Lines: Marx, Spinoza, Deleuze", with commentary by Étienne Balibar

Join us on for a seminar on "Parallel Lines: Marx, Spinoza, Deleuze" by Jason Read (University of Southern Maine) & commentary by Etienne Balibar (Kingston University).

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The seminar will be moderated by Oliver Feltham (AUP) and is co-organized with Sive Natura: International Center for Spinozan Studies)

Abstract:
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari argued that Spinoza’s question, “why do the masses fight for their servitude as if it was salvation?” was the central question of political philosophy. Such a formula suggests that Deleuze (and Guattari) understand that Spinoza posed the question of ideology avant la lettre. In this paper, I argue that Deleuze’s engagement with Spinoza can be understood to be one in which Spinoza is not so much a precursor to Marx, as Antonio Negri argued, or a necessary complement, as Frédéric Lordon argued, but a parallel line of inquiry to Marx. It is through Spinoza that Deleuze formulates a different understanding of not just ideology, one that foregrounds its affective dimension, but also materialism in terms of the materiality of the body and of social structures. This parallel line also makes connections between Spinoza’s thought and that of Michel Foucault, as both understood reality to be made up of bodies and ideas, relations of power, and structures of knowledge.

Bios:
Jason Read is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (SUNY 2003), The Politics of Transindividuality (Haymarket 2018), The Production of Subjectivity: Marx and Philosophy (Haymarket 2023) and The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work (Verso 2024). He blogs about philosophy, politics, and culture at unemployednegativity.com.

Étienne Balibar graduated in Philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne in Paris (1964). He has a PhD from Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (Netherlands) (1987) and Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (1993). He has been teaching at Universities of Algiers, Paris 1, Leiden, Paris 10-Nanterre, Buenos-Aires, U.C. Irvine, Columbia University in New York. His research interests include political philosophy from Aristotle to Arendt through Spinoza, Hegel and Marx, recent and contemporary French Philosophy (especially Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Blanchot), the question of critique with special reference to religion and political economy, racism and nationalism.